New Features:
* Multiple sandboxes can run at the same time.
* experimental LXC-based sandboxes (requires lxc pet package from repository)
* add ttyrec 1.0.8 (tty recorder), an enhanced version of "script"
* add htop 1.0.2
* GPT support for Fatdog Installer (only for BIOS systems, not for UEFI!)
* System hardware clock (hwclock) can be configured inn localtime or utc.
* base2ram=expand parameter to expand basesfs before loading in RAM
* Add cpulimit (command line utility to limit cpu usage for a process.)
* Wpa_gui now has a check box for "select any network". If you uncheck this box and want it remembered for next boot, you will need to go to File-Save-Configuration.
* Shotcut replaces Avidemux, a much better video editor. Note that there are no effects yet.

Make sure to use a new savefile or save folder while testing. Also note that there are no Nvidia or ATI proprietary video drivers yet. These will come with 630 final, the kernel will be updated again before final.

[/url]

--------

UPDATE on radeon power management:

Update: this release comes with kernel 3.11.r which comes with improved power management support for radeon cards; for more details please see this post from the radeon developer himself. This support is enabled by default, however the strategy is left at the default as "balanced".

If you're on a laptop and want to maximise battery life (as well as running cooler), you can change the power_dpm_state and power_dpm_force_performance_level as described int the blog post above; or alternatively use the attached script to set the power-level to "low", "auto", or "high" (=as in, high performance + high temperature + high power = less battery life). Personally I find that the 'low' level, my laptop now runs much cooler - reaching the levels previously only achievable when using Catalyst.

----

UPDATE on vdpau

vdpau is a framework for video acceleration, promoted for years by nvidia but has only been recently adopted by other GPU drivers like amd and intel. 630rc1 comes with VDPAU support for intel and amd but it is not included in the main iso because of the size (about 12MB compressed) - it is available on the package repo. If your flash video is stuttering and/or the laptop is getting hot when playing flash video, try installing vdpau pet package, it may help.

Oh the POV-ray request for ARM, I did compile POVray for the FD64-621 and it was just configure,make,make install took 4 minutes after decompression from bz2.
Now I'm going to be distracted from ARM 'testing' for a while... so no rush on that other request.

I tried to install the proprietary ati driver, the first one (13.4 I
think) gave a card not supported message when I tried to install it,
the beta driver compiled okay but after doing aticonfig --initial and
rebooting x wouldn't start, xorgwizard showed no fglrx selection so I
gave up and removed it.

Could you change the default viewer for PNG files to
Fotoxx instead of Gimp?

Will do.

Billtoo wrote:

I tried to install the proprietary ati driver, the first one (13.4 I
think) gave a card not supported message when I tried to install it,
the beta driver compiled okay but after doing aticonfig --initial and
rebooting x wouldn't start, xorgwizard showed no fglrx selection so I
gave up and removed it.

The Catalyst driver is somewhat in disarray; 13.4 is rather old and won't work with newer cards, but the latest beta doesn't work at all. This is true even with older kernels (tried this with 3.8.7 and 3.9.4), so we'll just have to wait for AMD to release an updated driver.

Meanwhile, please try the script I posted in the first post (radeon-dpm.sh); if you're after higher performance then set it to "high". Otherwise set it to "low" or even "auto" if you wish. If you could do a comparison between these levels it would be appreciated, so we can decide on what power levels we want to ship on the next release. I have done my own tests and the result is inconclusive (ie I don't see much difference in terms of performance, but I do see a lot of difference in power savings). May as well compare with 621 release running with Catalyst._________________-= The Fatdog Team (kirk, jamesbond, SFR and step) =-
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When I was doing my initial setup there were a few glitches that i have not had before. They have not happened again, so it is only for info in case it is significant to you.

Note: I run puppies from a FAT32 partition.

After I had done the initial setup and created the savefile, the next time I started Win2k it complained about the state of the puppy partition and ran the disk check.

I was copying some files from the partition to /usr/bin. When I copied the TurionPowerControl binary I got a couple of error boxes saying: "Group 3 is not set..." When I copied some of my xrandr little scripts there was no error.

On one boot there was a kernel panic in init, but it has not happened again in quite a few boots.

After I had done the initial setup and created the savefile, the next time I started Win2k it complained about the state of the puppy partition and ran the disk check.

Fatdog usually umounts the partition cleanly - except perhaps for the first time, when a savefile is created, and even this is rare (definitely not happening on ext2/3/4). The mechanism hasn't changed since the first 600 release, so yeah that's a bit odd. Kernel 3.11 however does bring changes in aufs layering; so perhaps there are one or two scripts that haven't been updated that cause this. Please do let me know if this happens again.

Quote:

I was copying some files from the partition to /usr/bin. When I copied the TurionPowerControl binary I got a couple of error boxes saying: "Group 3 is not set..." When I copied some of my xrandr little scripts there was no error.

That message comes from Rox, usually happen if you accidentally press the number key (e.g 3 or 4 or 5) on Rox window.

Quote:

On one boot there was a kernel panic in init, but it has not happened again in quite a few boots.

. Hopefully this isn't 3.11 regression. Do let us know if it happens again, and whether it is related to anything (e.g. rebooting while connected to samba shares, etc).

Quote:

I'll put my analysis of DPM and RS780/RS880 in a separate post.

Thank you. I forgot to note two things:
a) "auto" setting is the default setting you get after you boot
b) the settings are not persistent across reboots; they have to set every time (if you want anything other than "auto")._________________-= The Fatdog Team (kirk, jamesbond, SFR and step) =-
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I have been testing DPM on my RS880G and, as far as I can test, it doesn't seem to do anything but behave the same as power_profile - low.
(You had me fooled for a bit by enabling DPM via radeon-dpm.conf, but I disabled that so I can boot either mode)

Alex Deucher (agd5f) generally says that DPM should be similar to fglrx, but it's not.

My BIOS only has one performance level "performance" which has two P-states.

power_profile low or mid give me the lower one, and default or high give me the higher one

In terms of Fatdog I get the following, wallplug power at idle

35W fglrx (fatdog 610)

39W r600g low power profile

41W r600g high power profile

39W r600g dpm

40W/30W win2k

(in win2k it has two states: initially it drops to 40W then, after a few seconds it drops to 30W. In the 30W state it can still modify the display a bit e.g. scroll this window by clicking on the up or down arrows. Anything more makes it jump up again.)

I tried the power_dpm_force_performance_level switch but it has no effect. The idle power stays at 39W whether I set low, high or auto

There is a debugfs entry radeon_pm_info that should report the P-state, but I guess that debugfs is not enabled in Fatdog because the path /sys/kernel/debug does not exist.

Can I enable debugfs or is it something you have to do when you build the kernel?

My conclusion is the DPM may not be working at all on RS780/RS880

From the fglrx and win2k results, I speculate that the GPU must have some C-states with clock gating that are not invoked by DPM.

Also forcing the P-state does not do anything.

I don't have any application that I know would stress the GPU. Is there anything I can run on Fatdog that would definitely raise the P-state, if it could?

When the UVD/VDPAU support was first announced on 2nd April it was such a surprise that some people thought it was an April Fool joke.

Six months later UVD 2.0 - 2.2 is still not working, but it does in fglrx.
DPM is not working but it does in fglrx

I think they may have been right!

But I mainly use Fatdog for Video playback and fglrx is no good for that because it lacks 2d accelerated rendering.

I hope this analysis is useful to people with RS780/RS880 laptops who can't tell, as easily, what is happening.

@ Billtoo, jamesbond and others interested in the fglrx driver. I managed to build them ok (legacy too) on 3.10x (amd_driver-13.15-BETA-catalyst-3.10.5-PAE) for slacko and the magic is from this guy, Krzysztof Kolasa. Be warned though, he only offers a patch for the kernel driver itself, so it's a convoluted process of extracting the source, patching and rebuilding and hoping. Seems to work though, naturally some trial and error is involved._________________Puppy Linux Blog - contact me for access

Can I enable debugfs or is it something you have to do when you build the kernel?

Has to be done with the kernel build. James already has it on the todo list. We'll grab the latest 3.11.x kernel for final. Thanks for all the feedback LateAdopter.

01micko, Thanks for the link. Once we build the kernel for final, we'll begin the "fun" of making the Nvidia and ATI pets. The ATI pets are always a pain._________________-= The Fatdog Team (kirk, jamesbond, SFR and step) =-
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